The Sweet Sixteen

The unique Scotland accent English still hover by my ears after watching the Sweet Sixteen by Ken Loach.
The whole film follow a warm-hearted boy who has a dream before 16 but the dream has not came true in the end. I feel there is a needle pricking my heart when his dream breaking.
Lem is expecting his imminent “sixteen” and preparing do something for his mum who will be released sonly. He bought a van which at riverside and he took his sister to live together. Because of this dream, he and some of his close friends need to raise lots of money so they sell drug and do some dangerous things. All of these just because he want to build a sweet home for his mum. His sister has hurt by mum for many times, but she still supports Lem to achieve his dream.
However, not all the things can be successful. These puerile teenagers were caught by a gangster. Accidentally, Lem, this tricky boy seemed as a talented boy by the ringleader of the gangster. Lem took the first lesson is he should break away from his close friends. During the process of Lem becoming a man from a boy, he should learn how to cut his relation off. He should away from all his friends and even his sister. Then he has to make a deal with the villain for saving his mum.
Lem finally bought the van and made some simple decoration making it looks sweet. But the sweet van is derided by Lem mum. The dream of “sweet sixteen” has been broken at that moment.
I was thinking of The Four Hundred Blows by Francois Truffaut in 1959 when I watching the Sweet Sixteen. The traitorous teenager is endeared by films. Obviously, both of the two mischievous boys get two mischievous mothers. Leo wants to get away from the home. However, Lem want his mum going back home and he rebuilds the fragmentized home before his mum releasing.

After watching this film, I have experienced joys and sorrows of life as though. The traitorous problem of teenager always grows from a problem family. Similarly, the object of they anti-social is family or school. Lem took the dagger and pricked. With this action, all of the doctrine and frame of Ken Loach is falling momentary. This is the “four hundred blows” by Ken’s style. With the prick, all the sweet dream of sixteen gone with wind.

Colour&Lighting 2

All about Shunji Iwai

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQjZKAtZbPo

Shunji Iwai (Iwai Shunji, born January 24, 1963 in Sendai, Japan, Miyagi prefecture). Iwai is a Japanese film director/video artist, writer and documentarian.
Iwai attended Yokohama National University, graduating in 1987. In 1988 he started out in the Japanese entertainment industry by directing TV dramas and music videos. Then, in 1993, his TV drama, Fireworks, brought him critical praise and an award from the Japanese Director's Association for his portrayal of a group of children in the town of Iioka.
In 1995 he went on to start his career in feature films, starting with Love Letter. In 1996 came the commercial and critical success of Swallowtail Butterfly, a multifaceted story of the fictional Yen Town, a city of immigrants in search of hope and a better life with three separate and distinct main characters. Ageha (Ayumi Ito), an orphaned teenage girl, Glico (Chara), a prostitute turned pop star, and Feihong (Hiroshi Mikami), an immigrant who manages Glico's career and owns the Yen Town club.
In 1998, Fine Line Features released Love Letter in the US theatrically under the new title When I Close My Eyes ; it was the first Iwai-directed film to be released in the US theatrically.
Iwai enjoyed another kind of success with this film as well, having teamed up with Takeshi Kobayashi to create the music for the film and the Yen Town Band, headed by Pop star Chara. The band they created became a commercial hit in Japan. He would team up with Kobayashi again in 2001 for the harrowing High School Drama All About Lily Chou-Chou. Kobayashi would create the music for the titular pop star, Lily Chou-Chou (voiced by Japanese singer Salyu), that is spread through the film (as well as Debussy), and later be released as an album entitled Kokyu (Breathe).
In 2002 he released a short, ARITA, in which he composed his own film score for the first time. In 2004 Iwai released Hana & Alice, his first comedy. He once again composed the film score himself.
His next project, a piece he's written about the Japanese indie Rock scene in the mid 1990s called Bandage, is slated for release in late 2006. It will be helmed by Ryuhei Kitamura, of Azumi fame. Curiosity has spread over why Iwai is not directing his own script, but no answer has been revealed. He has recently directed a commercial airing in Japan featuring Matsu Takako, whom he has not worked with since 1998.
October, 2006 sees the Iwai produced film Rainbow Song released in Japan. The film is directed by Naoto Kumazawa and was written by Ami Sakurai. It stars previous Iwai actors Hayato Ichihara, Yu Aoi and Shoko Aida. Also in 2006, Iwai spent time documenting and interviewing Kon Ichikawa while filming The Inugamis (Inugamike no ichizoku - 2006) to create a feature length documentary about the director's life.

Lily Chou-chou

Shugo Oshinari as Shusuke Hoshino (Hoshino Shusuke), the best student in school who, after a trip to Okinawa, becomes a bully.
Hayato Ichihara as Yuichi Hasumi (Hasumi Yūichi), Hoshino's former friend who becomes a reluctant member of his gang and will later on be bullied by Hoshino. Yuichi is the leading character in the movie. He admins an online Lily Chou-Chou BBS and is a great fan of the singer.
Ayumi Ito as Yoko Kuno (Kuno Yōko), a classmate and love interest of Yuichi's. A brilliant pianist, she is the envy of a clique of powerful girls, and therefore is also bullied. She is raped by Hoshino's gang and cuts off her hair as a way of avoiding Shiori Tsuda's fate.
Yû Aoi as Shiori Tsuda (Tsuda Shiori), a classmate of Yuichi who gets blackmailed into enjo kōsai by Hoshino. Yuichi befriends her later on, and introduces her to Lily. She commits suicide by jumping off an electric tower.
Yuki Ito as Kamino, one of the boys in the blue school uniforms at the train station when Kuno is introduced.
Izumi Inamori as Izumi Hoshino (Hoshino Izumi), Hoshino's mother. It is unknown if she is single. She loves her son very much and welcomes Yuichi with open arms during a junior high sleepover at the Hoshino household.
Salyu as Lily Chou-Chou, the enigmatic and ethereal singer that Yuichi, Tsuda and others in the film are fans of. She is hardly seen in the film, except on a video screen near the story's end, but her music is heard throughout the movie. She is said by her fans to channel what is called "the Ether", which is not unlike the invisible substance once thought by ancient philosophers to be the field that light travels through. This "ether" can be heard in the calm, melancholy songs she sings.

All About Lily Chou-Chou follows two childhood friends, Shusuke Hoshino and Yuichi Hasumi, from the end of their junior high school run until the beginning of high school. The film has a discontinuous storyline, starting midway through the story, just after high school begins, then flashes back to junior high and summer vacation, and then skips back to the present.
In junior high, Hoshino was the best student in school, but was picked on by his classmates. He was skilled at kendo, and had a good-looking young mom. Yuichi, on the other hand, was a quieter boy who fell in love with the music of the odd musician Lily Chou-Chou. During a group trip to Okinawa, Hoshino had a traumatic near-death experience and his personality changed from good-natured to dangerous and manipulative. In high school, he takes his place as class bully and shows his newfound power by ruining the lives of his classmates. An alternative voice, that of the character Shiori Tsuda, attributes Hoshino's personality change to divorce and family ruin; this matches several scenes connecting the decline of Yuichi - who has had to change his name - to divorce.
Yuichi, the confused and shy former friend of Hoshino, finds himself sucked into his now-tormentor's gang. He is ridiculed and coerced into doing Hoshino's dirty work, and finds solace only in the ethereal music Lily Chou-Chou makes. Things become far worse for everyone when Yuichi is assigned to supervising Shiori Tsuda, whom Hoshino has blackmailed into enjo kōsai, and another girl is raped by Hoshino's lackeys after unwittingly offending the school's girl gang. The whole quagmire comes to a head when Yuichi heads to Tokyo to see a Lily Chou-Chou concert, and encounters the last person he thought would be there.
The story of Hoshino and Yuichi is paralleled by messages posted to a Lily Chou-Chou Internet message board. It is left up to the viewer to figure out which characters in the story are posting under what names.